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Nutrition researchers have found that these popular snack foods are the top waistline assassins.

For people trying to lose weight, here’s the good news: Nutrition researchers have scoped out the enemy. Turns out potato chips and soda are the top waistline assassins.

Everyone knows to cut back on junk food, but in a recent large study examining what foods were most associated with weight gain, potato chips and sweetened drinks stood out as the ultimate arch villains. Indeed, not all snacks are created equal. Here’s why:

Scientists have started to suspect that when it comes to junk food, some snacks are worse than others. In a recent Harvard study, researchers tracked 100,000 Americans who were not overweight to begin with every 4 years to see who gained the most weight and what foods they ate. They found that an expanding waistline was most strongly linked to potato chips and sugar-sweetened drinks.

Read more: Two Worst Foods for Your Weight

One greasy starter packs a whopping 2,100 calories and will surely blow away any weight-loss plan.

Usain Bolt. Michael Phelps. Jeff Gordon. What do these guys have in common? They know how to get off to a great start.

Think of them next time you settle into a booth at your favorite restaurant. Most sit-down chains offer a wide selection of egregious appetizers, “starters” that ought be called “stoppers” because they’ll stop your weight-loss plans dead. Unlike, say, a midafternoon candy bar or buttered popcorn at the movie theater, an appetizer isn’t a stand-alone indulgence. It’s a pre-game meal, the food you eat before you eat your food. And if you suck down 1,000 calories before dinner arrives, you’ll blow past your entire day’s calorie needs in one sitting. A thousand calories in just an appetizer? Oh, read on, innocent eater. . . .

Read more: 8 Worst Appetizers in America

To look good this summer, avoid snacks that can make you appear flabbier than you really are.

Summer is a challenging time for Kanye West, Lady Gaga, and Katy Perry. I’m not talking about the pop charts; they seem to have those well in hand. I’m talking about the paparazzi.

Celebrity photographers love nothing more than to catch a pop phenomenon emerging from the surf in St. Barts looking a little flabby, so they can sell their “Shocking Weight Gain!” headlines at the drugstore checkout. Is it unfair? You bet. Are you and I going to stare at the pictures anyways? Oh, yeah.

We like seeing celebs look less than perfect because, come swimsuit season, we all feel like we’re being gawked at; and whether those photos wind up in the tabloids or on our mom’s Facebook page, we all want to look our best. So what can you do when the cover-ups are about to come off and the cameras about to turn on?

Read more: 5 Worst Beach-Body Foods

Learn what you need — and what you don’t — from blenders, juicers, and coffeemakers.

Here’s our review of the top-performing products for your home’s exterior and interior, for your kitchen, and for laundry and cleaning from more than a thousand tested over the last year. In the Best & Worst sections we’ve included many of our best-value everyday products, such as lightbulbs and laundry detergents, so you’ll know what to buy and what to avoid. And don’t miss our look back at some of the biggest busts from 75 years of product testing, which you’ll find in The Way We Were. (Click on each product category below to access the Ratings chart.)

Kitchen
Whether you’re interested in everyday products, need some new small appliances, or are planning a kitchen remodel and need new major appliance, our review of the top kitchen products will come in handy. And take a trip back through time with our 75th-anniversary looks at coffeemakers and French-door refrigerators. (All links below are available to subscribers.)

Read more: The Best and Worst Kitchen Appliances

Start your day off on the right foot by avoiding these common, yet unhealthy breakfast options.

Whether you’re working out to build muscle, get definition, train for a marathon, lose weight, or because you’re just health conscious, you should be well aware of what you’re putting into your body on a daily basis and just how important that first meal of the day is. If, however, you’re like a lot of men and don’t really think about it (perhaps because you never seem to put on weight or believe that a little bit of this here and there won’t make a difference), then your breakfast food choices may not be so considered. If so, they can do a lot more than affect your overall fitness, having far-reaching effects on things such as your cholesterol, heart health, sex drive, and attention span. We’ve chosen five of the worst breakfast foods you can eat.

Cereal
It might seem obvious, but you’d be surprised how many people (grown-ups included) reach for a sugary cereal box every morning. It’s convenient, quick, and if you opt for one of the ones that aren’t coated in sugar, you probably think they’re pretty good for you, right? Wrong. It might seem a controversial choice on this list of worst breakfast foods, but plenty of regular cereals are actually packed with sugar and, thus, warrant a place here for the simple fact that you’re getting a dose of something you aren’t fully aware of.

Read more: Worst Breakfast Foods

Some pies get surprising raves, while others have chewy crust and rubbery cheese.

Chicago has deep dish, New York has slices, and airports have Sbarro. Or had. The pizza chain restaurant is preparing to file for bankruptcy, which may mean the end of stuffed veggie pies steaming behind sneeze-guards.

Read more: The best and worst pizza: the chains we live for and those we don’t

Much of the sugar in a bowl of chocolate ice cream will be stored by your body as fat.

There are a lot of things that can conspire to keep you up all night: The slumping markets. The rising prices. That recurring nightmare about being chased down the street by Steven Tyler’s lips. But if you’re having trouble getting a good night’s sleep, here’s a culprit you might not have looked at: Your diet. Turns out that plenty of late-night snacks can actually interfere with sleep—and conspire to make you gain more weight than you should.

It’s true: When food keeps you awake at night, it’s actually doing a double-whammy on your tummy. In a study from Wake Forest University, adults younger than 40 who slept 5 hours or less gained more abdominal fat over a 5-year period than those who slept for 6 or 7 hours a night. (You think Jimmy Kimmel looks like that by accident?) And worse, in a recent study from the European Heart Journal, researchers found that people who sleep fewer than 6 hours a night are at a higher risk for certain health conditions such as heart disease and stroke.

Read more: The Worst Late Night Snacks

A single Fannie May Cappuccino Truffle packs 140 calories and 8 grams of fat.

Valentine’s Day: Celebration of love, or calculated plot to destroy romance?

Think about it: There’s nothing more romantic than a spontaneous outpouring of love. But that’s one thing you can’t have on V-day, when we’re all supposed to move in lockstep formation down to the jewelry/flower/stationery store. How about cozying up over an intimate dinner for two? Fugghedaboutit: Every restaurant in town is packed to the gills and about as romantic as the mosh pit at a Green Day concert. And what about being fit, healthy, and ready for lovin’? Good-bye, sexy body: There’s nothing like an enormous cardboard heart filled with carbohydrates to ruin the way your belly looks, and feels.

Read more: Best and Worst Valentine’s Day Candy

“Bottomless” breadsticks, salads, pancakes, and fries are true diet disasters.

Remember the story of Hansel and Gretel? How the witch of the woods lured them into her edible candy hut and gave them piles and piles of free food—just so she could fatten them up and turn them into stew?

Well, think about that old fairy tale the next time a waiter drops a plate of “free” food on your table. For years I’ve been recommending the best foods to buy, and warning about menu items that might make you fat. But our newest Eat This, Not That! research reveals that some of the worst dietary sins aren’t ordered at all. They just come to your table for free!

Read more: The Worst “Free” Restaurant Food

The competition for meals packed with calories and fat was fierce this year.

When we published our first edition of Eat This, Not That: Worst Foods in America back in 2007, we made a lot of restaurant chains very unhappy. But we also made a lot of their attorneys really, really happy, as they soon began earning massive legal fees sending us saber-rattling correspondences on behalf of the food marketers they represented.

As 2010 draws to a close, it’s time for another walk down the Hall of Restaurant Shame. And we’re sorry to say that, despite the fact that more than 6 million Americans have begun using Eat This, Not That! as their weapon of choice against bad-for-you food and the restaurants that proffer it, the restaurants themselves still haven’t gotten the message. This year brought perhaps the craziest, most calorically damaging menu items we’ve ever seen. In fact, you should not attempt to eat a single thing on this list unless you are sharing it with at least three other people—because each of these “individual servings” include a full day (or more) worth of calories.

Read more: Worst Foods in America, 2010